British author AT Williams tells Metro he made the killing of Baha Mousa by British soldiers in Iraq the subject of his new book and why it was symbolic of the tragedy of Britain’s involvement in the war.

AT Williams details the death Of Baha Mousa in new book A Very British Killing (Picture: File)What made you decide to make the killing of Baha Mousa by British soldiers in Iraq the subject of your book?

It seemed to me that the story of Baha Mousa’s death symbolised some of the tragedy of Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war. Not only did it show how easily our troops could abuse the very people we were supposed to liberate but it also revealed how incapable – or unwilling, or incompetent – the army, government and the law were in stopping that abuse.

The public inquiry into his death found that the violence meted out to him by British troops could not be described as a ‘one-off’, yet the impression from press coverage is how incidents of abuse are isolated and unusual. Do you think the assumption of rarity is accurate?

No. The detention and interrogation system imposed by the armed forces was flawed. It enabled abusive techniques (hooding, imposing stress positions – known as ‘harshing’) to be used that frequently spilled over into physical and psychological violence. The government has set up a body to find out the scale of the problem and already almost 200 separate cases are being investigated.

Has the army put in any measures to ensure such a systemic failing never happens again?

The government has promised that the army will change its procedures to prevent this kind of abuse happening again. But the same promise was made in 1972 when similar practices were exposed in Northern Ireland.

Some people excuse ‘harsh’ interrogation methods by saying we get life-saving intelligence from using them. Do you think that’s true?

The case against torture to extract information is strong: not only is there scant evidence such methods work but morally and legally Britain condemns torture absolutely.

Do you think that being closely allied to the US has affected the way the British military conducts itself?

That is the argument for some who see our armed forces ‘infected’ by the US. But Britain has been involved in more than 17 wars since 1945 and British troops have committed atrocities in many of them. That would suggest a culpability that can’t simply be passed on to others. This is our problem and our fault.

A Very British Killing: The Death Of Baha Mousa (Jonathan Cape, £16.99) is out on October 18.